University:
Whitman College
Course:
HIST-110 | East Asian History 1600 to the Present
Academic year:

2022
Views:

257

Pages:

12
Author:

fintaira1i6

Reconstructed Memories-the A-bomb Literature of Seirai Yūichi Historical Overview ● Hiroshima and Nagasaki ○ ○ Killed 33% of Hiroshima’s population, 28% of Nagasaki’s Survivors referred to as hibakusha (被爆者) ● Today ○ ○ Peace memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Korean hibakusha struggle to be recognized Hiroshima memorial for hibakusha (left) and memorial for Korean victims (right) Seirai Yūichi ● Real name Akitoshi Nakamura (b. 1958) ○ Both parents lived through atomic bomb ● Will analyze “Insects” from his short story collection Ground Zero, Nagasaki (爆心) (Eng. published 2014) Seirai’s Identification with First-Generation Memory ● ● ● “The land’s [Nagasaki’s] memories float up from within my heart” About short story collection: “was something that depicted restored memories” “The stories of my family’s involvement with the A-bomb felt familiar to me.” Present-day Urakami River Post A-bomb Urakami River Question for Analysis Seirai Yūichi is a second-generation survivor of atomic bomb yet writes from the perspective of first-generation survivors. How is it possible for him to represent traumatic experiences he has no direct memory of while evoking first-generation memory? Narrative Memory “...narrating memories to others (who are strong enough and empathic enough to listen) enables survivors to gain more control over the traces left by trauma. Narrative memory...defuses traumatic memory, giving shape and temporal order to the events recalled” (Brison 71). How might someone achieve this without direct memory to narrate from? Assembling Narrative Memory ● ● Traumatic Memory ○ “The stories of my family’s involvement with the A-bomb felt familiar to me.” “Shape and temporal order” ○ “The land’s memories float up from within my heart” To transform inherited memory into ‘narrative memory’ the traumatic narrative is imbued with qualities of a direct memory (‘shape and temporal order’) through the act of narration. Seirai Yūichi; “Insects” Elderly christian hibakusha Mitsuko reflects on her life after receiving letter from Reiko ○ Mitsuko loved Reiko’s husband (Sasaki) and once had an affair with him “Insects”: Invocation of Insects ● Religious Importance ○ ● Comparisons to Mitsuko ○ ○ ● “I realized somehow that I wasn’t going to die. The insect was my guardian angel” (61) “Look at her. Just like a little cricket.” (69) “And I became like an insect, too. An insect that mates with the wet tip of its body” (75) Reflections of the Human post A-bomb ○ “We’re just like your insects. Eat, mate, reproduce. Who lives, who dies? It’s just luck, and that’s all there is to it.” (67) Seirai Yūichi; “Insects”: The Insect Metaphor ● Insects reflect dissolution of human perspective + reciprocity ● Reflects attitudes from 1st-generation hibakusha ○ Toyoshima Yoshio: “To trot out ‘humanism’ in the face of the atomic bomb is to talk nonsense” Nagasaki after A-bomb detonation Seirai, 2nd gen Hibakusha He was an insect. A cricket that landed close to the epicenter after the bomb fell. A godless insect. When summer comes, that area is filled with the sound of insects: cicadas, ants, flies, and crickets in the grass. Here and there, an occasional lizard flits between the shadows. These creatures hid away on Noah’s Ark and have survived through all the disruption the world has seen ever since. When autumn comes, their front legs twitch together as if in prayer, and they wither and die. Maybe they also long for faith, like us./ That’s what he was Reiko-one of those insects. (77) Ota Yoko, 1st gen Hibakusha They were half melting, but not completely melted. Thick and muddy, there was no sign of their having put up resistance to this sole primitive measure. After once eyeing this sight, I had begun to suffer from association. It was about human beings heaped up in a mound of death, half burnt but not completely melted, with no energy to show any sign of resistance. They were so alike. Conclusions ● ● Nagaoka Hiroyoshi: a-bomb literature is ‘writing that expresses both the evil of the bomb and the survival of human dignity.’ John Treat: “It [the nuclear age] is an age not enjoined by emotions of epics…but rather one effectively voided of them. This is true of both those bombed and those who did the bombing.” Seirai’s work reflects the voiding of past conceptual frames in the wake of the a-bomb, yet how life still continues on for survivors. It is through grounding the trauma of the A-bomb with an intimate portrayal of a first-generation character that allows him to reconstruct a memory of the A-bomb in microcosm.

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